Summary

In “Some Women,” Didion examines the art of photography, remarking that there are two subjects at play – the subject, or the content of the photograph as seen by the photographer, and the ‘subject’ as the person being photographed. She finds that the person being photographed is manipulated through this art to resemble not themselves but rather the photographer’s vision. Didion writes, “This business of the subject is tricky. Whether they are painters or photographers or composers or choreographers or for that matter writers, people whose work it is to make something out of nothing do not much like to talk about what they do or how they do it” (101). She relates to this feeling of paranoia about speaking of the actual content of the artist’s work, since she, too, struggled with superstition and guarded the image of...